Grrrrr

[artyartie]

With my piddly income from last year, I more than qualify for Turbo Tax's free filing program. But evidently I hit the wrong button and now it's trying to get me to pay for the full blown deluxe version. Grrrr. So tomorrow, when I'm coherent, I will go to a different site with free filing for those of us in the lower tax brackets.

I currently have two job prospects out now, after posting my resume on Craigslist. Honestly, that site works better than Monster. The University of Denver job didn't quite work out, unfortunately, but both of these sounds like enjoyable work and they pay well. And hopefully, I won't have to work at these jobs for long, with the prospect of school. All I need is two more letters of rec and I can send my applications off - and then you all get to go through my grad school anxiety, part II. I think I'm in a better place, mentally, than last year, though not having a job has me a little antsy right now. Just too much uncertainty at once! Thankfully I'm nowhere near the point where the stress is so bad I can't read - that happenned a few years ago and it was just horrible. I could barely read a magazine. But still, it would be nice for April to be here, and with it a job and an acceptance letter.

But speaking of books, I've been busy! I just finished Peter Raven Under Fire an Age of Sail book for 5th-6th grade readers, that had a lot of potential but the characters ended up being a little flat - and the female lead was a compete Mary Sue, sadly. Also in the Age of Sail vein, but much funnier, are the Pirates! books. Do not read them in public unless you want people looking at you as you laugh. I should really quote some of the best lines here. Also, I'm almost done with the first in the Bartimaeus(sp) trilogy, and I'm rather enjoying the read. Next up I have a particularly biting satire of The DaVinci Code - The DaVinci Cod. Unfortunately, it helps if you've read the original to 'get' the parody - he skewers Brown's writing and his more ludicrous bits (his protagonist is a professor of anagrammology - a field as made up as religious symbology) - I can't wait for him to rip into Brown's depiction of college classes. And the romance. And the really silly puzzles any third-grade girl could solve. *coughs* Er, if you like the original, I wouldn't read my journal in May, as I will probably go into a full blown rant against the book and the subsequent PR blitz for the movie.

Comments

[artyartie.livejournal.com]

What irks me most about the whole Da Vinci Code is how people are blathering on that it's "ZOMG the best book evah!!" It's not, I'm sorry, not even close. The writing is average, and sometimes terribly cliched, the characters utterly forgettable and the premise just ludicrous. I've studied a bit of the early church and did my thesis on Mary Magdalene, and I laughed at the "troubadours searching for the Sacred Feminine" bit. But when this piece of mediocrity is being voted as the best book of all time, it really, really irks me. There's sooooo much better out there, people. I usually try and entince people to read some good books when they mention they like the Da Vinci Crap. One of my favorites is The Instance of the Fingerpost by Iain Pears. It's set in Restoration Oxford and is beautifully written, with an absolutely compelling mystery.

So as much as I love Paul Bettany, I won't be watching the movie. I'd just be writing in agony the entire time.

[melroseplant.livejournal.com]

I was mad at Paul Bettany signing onto this project too.


I loved Instance of the Fingerpost. Infinitely better.